Meta

Subscribe

Stuck in the Elevator

Let us assume that all knowledge of what exists is to come from experience.

By experience I mean those things that come from our senses, which is sight, touch, sound, smell, and taste. These are the things from which we come to know of ‘reality’. These are what impinges on our consciousness to let us know of what exists. We say that something exists when we have an experience of it. When we don’t have an experience of it, we say that we don’t know if it exists or even say that it doesn’t exist.

Experience shows us what is actual. Being actual means that it exists, and to know something exists is to be presented to our consciousness by the senses. Now our memory allows us to remember what was actual. For example, yesterday I had the experience of reading a specific book, ‘The Grand Design‘ by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. It is not actual now. For I do not have the experience of reading it now. I can remember that I read it, right now. However, it is not an actual experience right now. The only experience is that of recollection and not of existence, and the recollection happens now.

Now say that we step into an elevator. The dimensions of the elevator is 4 feet in length, and 3 feet in width, and 7 feet in height. Now say that the elevator closes. Our experience only shows that what is actual is what we are experiencing. What we are experiencing is just the contents of the elevator. This would be what we see, feel, smell, and hear while we are in the elevator. This is all that is actual, and this is all that we can say to exist. The elevator is the confines of our knowledge of existence, of what is actual.

Our experience doesn’t go outside of the elevator, or even make sense to talk about the outside of the elevator. As far as experience goes, it doesn’t exist or we don’t know it to exist. However, we can imagine that there are things that are existing while we are not experiencing them. The problem is that we can’t know that they are actual, or that they are existing then. We can imagine it, but that is just confined to within our own heads and not known to exist, like our memory of recollecting what was actual.

That is the limit of experience. That is the limit of knowledge by experience.